Hatters' effort too little, too late

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT), Jim Stout

Published 1:00 am, Wednesday, December 22, 2004

THE NEWS-TIMES

DANBURY - Like he has done so many times over the past four years,
Brad Pippa
made the long-range jumper look so easy, squaring his shoulders to the basket, elevating his long arms and 6-foot-3 body and effortlessly draining a 3-point shot from high atop the right wing.
It was the type of shot the Danbury High boys basketball team needed to make with 1.4 seconds remaining in the game. It was the type of shot the Hatters needed to make the entire game.
Problem was, when Pippa hit his last-second 3-pointer on Tuesday night against
Fairfield Warde
, it arrived just a little too late, just as most of the Hatters offense had done throughout the evening.
Fairfield Warde may be only half the team it used to be before the old Fairfield High was split in two, but the Mustangs got to keep the half you'd want in a game like this, namely guards who know how to shoot and know how to protect a lead when they get it. It made Danbury's game of catch-up all the more difficult and the Hatters ultimately succumbed to Warde, 55-52, in a FCIAC game.
"We started playing too late," said Danbury guard

Greg Snopkowski
, whose nine-point effort in the third quarter had given his team the chance to rally.
"If we'd started rebounding earlier and hitting some shots before we did, we could have gotten back into this earlier."
But Warde which is coached by former
Dave Schulz
assistant
Jeff Seganos
and runs a lot of the old Fairfield High offensive sets, was just good enough to build a couple of eight-point leads in the second and third quarter, then withstand the desperate Danbury full-court pressure over the final 4:30 of the game.
Danbury (1-2) led briefly by 44-43 with 3:25 left after Pippa nailed his first 3-pointer of the game, and could have been up by three points the next time down the court on a left baseline runner by Snopkowski.
But the latter basket was waved off as Casey Cilio stepped in front of Snopkowski and took a charge.
Warde point guard Billy Barrett scored the next five points for the Mustangs, including three on a shot from the left corner with 2:08 remaining, boosting his team's advantage to four points.
Pippa again hit for 3 with 1.4 seconds left, but that still left the Hatters a point short at 53-52.
Snopkowski finished with a game- and career-high 18 points, but Danbury's offensive contributions were otherwise erratic. Pippa hit 2-of-3 3-point attempts in the closing minutes, but missed his first eight from long range. Paul DeCarvalho, who scored 24 points in each of the Hatters' first two games, had 15. Center

Bob DiNardo
fell into early foul trouble and did not score.
"When we don't make our shots, like we didn't do in the first half, it makes everything else look bad," said Danbury coach
Tom Pardalis
.
"We couldn't put the ball in the basket early, and against a team like Fairfield, which handles the ball extremely well and is patient and disciplined, you're asking for trouble."
Warde (3-0) missed plenty of its own tries, but still managed to hit nine 3-pointers for the game, led by the three (and 15 points) of Barrett. Matt Baker also scored 15 for the Mustangs and Jared Neff came off the bench to hit a pair of first-half treys.
The two times Danbury went to a man-to-man defense to confront the Warde shooters, the Hatters found Warde's back-door cutters streaking to the basket for lay-ups. DiNardo, who at 6-foot-3 is Danbury's tallest frontcourt starter, had to go to the bench with his second personal foul with 4:07 left in the first quarter.
"(Warde) hit some outside shots and scored some second-chance points on us," Snopkowski said. "Obviously we weren't always getting out on their shooters like we needed to and we didn't always box out."
But Snopkowski scored nine points over the last five minutes of the third period, helping draw Danbury to within 32-31 entering the final period.
"At halftime, the coaches said we had to come out and shoot better in the second half and start connecting," Snopkowski said. "I just tried to get the ball up there and not think about it."
But Baker and Vic Pappola hit back-to-back 3s to open the final period as Barrett made a pair of splendid bounce passes through traffic to help avoid Danbury's defensive trap. That pushed the Warde lead back to seven points again.
"We're not fast and we're not big," said Pardalis, "and compounding everything is that we're not scoring. People we were counting on to score aren't scoring.
"If we come out and hit a couple of those shots early," Pardalis added, "maybe we get an eight-point lead and they have to start rushing. But they're very patient. They're not the type of team you want to fall behind on."